


Quaker faith and practice

by Naraht



Series: Incendiary [2]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: 1940s, Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Gay Character, Grief/Mourning, Internalised Homophobia, Lake District, London, M/M, PTSD, Pacifism, Post-Canon, Queer Themes, Religious Themes, The Blitz, World War II, quaker character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ralph and Andrew struggle to make a life for themselves in wartime London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There's a war on

Hyde Park in 1941 was no refuge from the demands of wartime. It could have been a military encampment: khaki uniforms, silvery barrage balloons floating close to the ground, vegetable plots being energetically dug. Exhausted office workers dozed on the grass during their lunch hour. 

It was Ralph's lunch hour as well but Andrew was yawning, having spent the previous night driving an ambulance. They strolled slowly together along the wide paths, having no destination in mind other than one another's company. Andrew had come all the way from the East End for this brief rendezvous, painfully inadequate though it was.

Three weeks ago, the day after Laurie's funeral, Ralph had woken to find Andrew's fair head pillowed on his chest. He had realised then, with the clarity of the morning after, that this was not something to be done once and finished with. Both he and Andrew were to catch a train back to London later that morning; it had seemed suddenly, heartbreakingly impossible to imagine bidding the boy farewell in Paddington and going their separate ways. _We'll see each other again_ , he had said then, and Andrew, nodding mutely, had subsided back into sleep.

They had done. They had indeed. But quick, stolen meetings were nothing that one could live upon.

"For all I see you," Ralph said, breaking the silence, "you might be halfway across the country."

"It's wartime," said Andrew. "You can't expect it to be any different."

Ralph had been used to the claustrophobic closeness of a ship, where one had no privacy and everything one did was observed. In port, though, he was used to having his liberty. He missed his little digs in Bridstow with an intensity that he would not have thought possible. He was still staying, rather irregularly, in a merchant mariners' hostel; he had not yet crossed the threshold of Andrew's shared house in the East End.

"I can," he said. "You must admit at the very least that living by the docks is dangerous."

"Dave says it was a thousand times worse in the autumn. It was worse even in December, when I arrived. After a while one hardly feels it any more."

Ralph ignored the reference to Dave. It was a subject he did not feel up to pursuing at the moment; he had a more immediate aim.

"I'll take a flat somewhere quiet, I mean to anyway. Somewhere in north London. You can have your own room if you like. We'll be flatmates. It would take a hell of a dirty mind for anyone to object to that."

"Have you been thinking all this time that's the only reason why I said no?"

"I can't think of any other reason why you would."

"You're forgetting that I should still have to go clear across London to get to my work. It's not just the ambulance driving. There's the relief work and the fire watching and the meetings on top of it…"

If Ralph had learned anything about Quakerism over the past few weeks it was that its practice involved an interminable succession of meetings, both uppercase and lowercase, and seemingly no efficient method of settling a course of action. This seemed odd to him, according ill with what he knew of Andrew's character, which was both practical and (for the most part) quickly decisive. But it was clear that he understood this side of Andrew's life very little.

"How could I forget the meetings," he said.

Andrew stepped aside for a woman with a pram to pass by. He gave Ralph a stubborn, rather self-righteous look from the other side of the path.

"You know very well it's driving me mad," Ralph added. "Half at sea and half on shore."

Andrew sighed. "Why don't you come to the house tomorrow evening. Most of them will be out and I'm not on duty till ten. I know you've wanted to."

Ralph stepped across the path, over to Andrew's side. He was barely an inch shorter than Ralph, if that, and as Ralph approached he raised his chin as if to make up the difference.

"I've wanted a good deal more than that," said Ralph in an undertone.

"You act as though I haven't," Andrew replied.

***

During the rest of the afternoon Ralph could hardly concentrate on his duties. It was desk work, pushing paper ships around a paper ocean while other men sailed into danger with a fresh breeze in their face. London was stifling with the heat of late spring, windows taped against the blast and painted shut, dust of ruined buildings hanging in the air.

He racked his brain, wanting to believe that he was thinking clearly and knowing perfectly well that he was in a daze, lack of sleep mixed with a good helping of sexual frustration. They'd been to hotels a few times but one could not carry on like that forever.

Where could two men be alone in London? Put like that it sounded bloody obvious. Bim or Bunny would have laughed. Forget parties, with the blackout in full swing all of London was crawling with queers. Any dark alley was invitation enough. But it was not Andrew's style, nor really Ralph's, not if he had better prospects in view.

His head ached. He had never quite shaken off the hangover of the night before. Without a drink or two before bed it was impossible to sleep in the bustle of an air raid shelter or in the hostel with the bombs crashing down outside. He'd looked in the mirror that morning while shaving and seen the face of a much older man.

Well. He'd signed on for the duration, hadn't he? In all senses of the word. He felt a strange sense of comfort at the idea, as if the decision were out of his hands. For the duration, and for Andrew. There was some honour in that.

***

Thankfully the next night was a quiet one. Ralph walked from the Underground station along buckled tram tracks, schooling himself not to see the destruction on either hand. What, during his first visit, had seemed merely part of the necessary misery of war now seemed abruptly personal, and hardly to be borne.

The semi-detached house was still standing, though Andrew got the door open with some difficulty. The place seemed to have settled on its foundations; there was a crack running though the stucco of the exterior wall.

"Do come in," said Andrew. 

Even this simple invitation across the threshold seemed freighted with meaning. Last time, when he had come with the news of Laurie's death, Andrew had not asked him in.

Together they wrestled the door closed, though finally Ralph had to put his shoulder to it. In the process he'd somehow got his arms around Andrew. He leaned over and kissed him, hard, before any objection could be made.

Andrew broke away first, breathless. "There are people upstairs."

"Of course there are," said Ralph.

He let Andrew lead him through into the small kitchen. 

"Tea?" said Andrew, already automatically putting two spare teaspoonfuls into the grimy pot.

"Anything stronger?"

Andrew looked embarrassed. "Not really. There isn't the call for it."

"Tea then. No milk."

Andrew did not ask about sugar. 

As soon as they had settled with their tea, there were steps coming down the stairs. The door opened and a young man came through.

"Hallo, Andrew," he said, "just getting a glass of water."

"Hello, Tom," said Andrew.

Ralph could feel the scrutiny even sitting with his back to the sink. He had not felt so conspicuous in his uniform since he had first been commissioned.

"You're not a Friend, are you?"

"No," said Ralph. "But then you could see that."

Tom left with his water without saying another word.

"Charming," said Ralph.

Andrew shrugged apologetically. "He's rather rigid."

"I should say so."

"He believes in what he does. His brother was with the Unit in Finland and Norway. They just missed being evacuated at Namsos. They got away to Sweden, and then Egypt, and then went to work for the Red Cross in Greece. Tom's brother is an orderly now, only in a German prison camp. They won't release them, you see, because none of the Friends have Red Cross credentials."

"Sounds a shambles," said Ralph. But then he added, "I was at Namsos."

"I know you were," said Andrew.

After that Andrew made more tea. Ralph did his best to drink it without showing his dislike, as it was done in a spirit of generosity. They sat there together, looking at one another, not having anything that could be said. Andrew had just put his hand on Ralph's when there came the sound of a key in the lock. He took it away again.

"Andrew?" came a voice in the hall. "Are you in?"

"Yes, Dave," called Andrew, "I'm through here."

Ralph wondered whether he could make a quick bolt for the garden. He got to his feet as Dave came in, and earned a look up and down for his troubles. But Dave turned away without addressing himself to Ralph at all.

"There was a meeting at the Students' Hostel, Andrew. Did you forget? I thought I would have seen you there."

"I couldn't go," said Andrew calmly. "Since I'd already arranged to be here. Dave, this is--this is a friend of Laurie's. He's just come by for cocoa."

He had carefully avoided giving Ralph's name but Dave looked suspicious enough without it.

"On duty at ten tonight?"

"That's right," said Andrew. "But it's not even quarter to nine. There's plenty of time."

"I had better be going anyway," said Ralph. "Thanks for everything. God bless."

"I'll walk you to the station," said Andrew.

***

Despite his fears, it turned out that Alec had passed his exams with flying colours, and got his first choice of residency: he was to become a houseman at Barts. Sandy, less lucky, was on his way to a hospital in Glasgow.

"I get a letter from him by almost every post," Alec confessed. "But I don't think it will last."

"You don't want it to last," said Ralph.

"One does rather feel that one can suddenly breathe again."

They were drinking together in a little club called the Arts and Battledress. It was at the back of the National Gallery, apparently just opened. Ralph liked to consider himself knowledgable about the lie of the land but Alec, despite having only just moved to London, had an unfailing instinct for finding these places.

"It'll be closed in a couple of years," he said. "They always are. Anyway, cheers."

"Cheers."

"So how are you? No, don't tell me." Alec studied Ralph's face. "You haven't been sleeping. You're drinking too much, again. And you've met someone."

"I expect you'll be meeting Watson at Barts any day now yourself. How did you know?"

"Only that you somehow look happy despite it all. Well, go on, tell me. You've moved quickly. How did you meet? Or is it someone I know?"

"Not in so many words."

Ralph hadn't imagined that he could be so bashful about admitting something to Alec--a man who, after all, knew him better than anyone.

Alec's voice had a warning tone. "Who is it, Ralph?"

"I don't believe you've met him. Andrew Raynes."

"The little orderly boy?" exclaimed Alec. "Laurie's boy? You're with Laurie's boy?"

"Keep your damn voice down!" 

He glanced around the pub, though it was not the sort of place where any such pronouncement would have gone amiss.

"Ralph, really, of all the men in London…. You're in love with him?"

"I'd hardly fetch up with a man like that if I weren't."

"I suppose you wouldn't. But what is it? Schooldays all over again? I never thought that a teenage conchie would be your type."

Hitherto Ralph had kept Andrew sealed in a mental compartment away from the rest of his life, hatches firmly sealed and dogged. Andrew was the last resort; Andrew would keep him afloat if all else failed. It was the final grasp for a rope by a drowning man. 

And now Alec, with his unerring ability for finding the sore point, was coolly taking to bits something special, an outcome that had seemed inevitable only to the two men so intimately concerned.

"When did it happen?" Alec pursued.

"After the funeral. One thing led to another and... Well. You can imagine."

Alec nodded with the air of one whose interest has not yet been completely satisfied. "Yes, and...?"

"And I'd rather not talk about it, if it's all the same to you. Don't let it worry you. It's not your look-out."

Alec's face reacted in a way that Ralph hadn't been expecting. A terrible thought occurred to him. "Good God, Alec, you don't mean to say that you'd thought…?"

"For old times' sake at least," he said, shrugging, with the tone of a concession.

"Let's have another drink," Ralph said crisply.

Whether it was excuse, promise or delaying tactic, he was not sure himself.

***

Ralph wound up taking a place in Maida Vale, a flat at the top of a shared house which had a sitting room, two bedrooms and a tiny galley kitchen that belonged to him alone. (The toilet likewise, though it was half a flight down from the rest of the flat, on a landing.) It was an extravagant style of housekeeping, by his standard at least. During his years at sea, unlike most of his shipmates, he had not had to support a wife and family. He could not think that he ever would. And living up to his income was, after all, not a sin.

All that remained to be settled was the question of Andrew. In the short term, all that Ralph had managed to exact from him was a promise to pay a visit from the East End on his very first night off, and as many of the subsequent ones as seemed practical. It occurred to Ralph that there was such a thing as being too practical.

"But of course," Andrew had said, "I should have to make the trip every night if I were living with you."

Ralph had laid the whole evening out in his mind. He would run Andrew a bath, sit by its side with a drink while he washed off the dust of the day. He had put clean sheets on the bed. He had even bought Andrew a pair of pyjamas, using his own coupons, in case he didn't like to sleep without them.

When Andrew came through the door he was in his work clothes, brown corduroys and a heavy wool shirt that might even have been grey originally. He looked exhausted, dirty from head to toe and with a raw scrape on the back of one hand. There was something in him of the nobility of sacrifice. A surge of emotion went through Ralph, equal parts admiration, tenderness and lust.

He stepped forward quickly. Andrew pushed the door closed, one motion behind his back. They met right inside it, kissed as if one or the other had just been pulled from the rubble.

Ralph began unbuttoning Andrew's shirt where he stood. Andrew pressed close against him. Even in these moments he had an intense seriousness to him, uncompromising, his attention utterly fixed upon the task at hand. That blunt, unpracticed touch burned with eagerness.

"Bed's through here," said Ralph hoarsely. The bath could go hang.

***

They were woken, much later, by the air raid sirens. Andrew blinked quickly awake, feeling at the side of the bed for an absent lamp. His groping hand touched Ralph's hair and then he laughed.

"There's an Anderson at the bottom of the garden," said Ralph. "It's absolutely thronged. The house is full to capacity."

"Let's stay. It doesn't sound as though the bombs are falling here anyway."

"Famous last words," said Ralph. 

But they lay there anyway listening to the drone of the bombers and the stutter of anti-aircraft batteries. 

"I hate having the other bedroom empty," Ralph said finally. "There's a family of three staying in the downstairs sitting room."

"We've hundreds in the rest centres now. Thousands. You ought to rent it out."

"It would have to be to a very particular type."

"Oh," said Andrew apologetically. "I hadn't thought of that."

Ralph suppressed the urge to say _you wouldn't_. It hardly seemed fair. But the topic seemed to have sparked something in Andrew.

"I had words with Dave about you," he said.

"I suppose it had to happen eventually. What did the old bugger say?"

"He said he didn't want me mixed up with this sort of thing, and when I said I wasn't mixed up about it at all, he liked it even less. Then we had to get down to specifics."

"Oh."

"You can imagine. On one hand it was absolutely ghastly. On the other… I find it difficult to discount Dave entirely, however much I might disagree with him. He's done so much for me, at times when I really didn't have anyone else. And he knew my parents. For him that's what all of this is about, really. As he talked, I got the feeling that his life was passing before his eyes."

"I know the feeling."

"Anyway, I think he'd begun suspecting something even before you came round. He has a sense for it; he had with Laurie too."

"And what did he say?" asked Ralph again, feeling a chill of fear that perhaps one of the arguments had driven home.

"Oh, what you would expect. That whatever my feelings, it was wrong to act upon them. That I'd been under a great deal of strain lately, with Laurie's death, and that I was understandably confused. That you were a good deal older than me and I shouldn't let you cloud my judgment. That he could tell I'd been distracted from my work lately, which is true. He even said that I should go away for a few days to give myself the time to think about it properly."

"He threw you out?"

"Not at all. He said that I ought to go up to Pardshaw, in the Lakes, to get some fresh air and a break from the bombing. That was where I went when I had to decide whether or not to register as a CO, back at the beginning of the war. It's a Quaker hostel."

There was a pause in the bombing. How odd it was that the silence seemed more shattering than the noise.

"Why would you assume that he'd thrown me out?" asked Andrew. 

"Just something someone once said."

As he'd said to Laurie, in retrospect he should have gone straight to Southampton. His mistake had been giving his parents the chance to get the boot in. Being disowned had almost been a relief when it came. It was the confrontation before which stuck in the memory somehow.

"I forget how difficult these things can be," Ralph added, lying badly for the sake of the implied question.

"That night after the funeral," said Andrew, sailing on past, "I told myself that I had to know, that if I didn't _know_ , really, what it all meant, none of my conclusions would be good for anything. I wondered whether, having experienced the physical side of things, I should feel it to be wicked. Inwardly, I mean."

"It was a way of testing yourself," said Ralph dully.

"In a manner of speaking."

Ralph wondered whether it would always be his fate to love more than he was loved. What was wrong with him, that he got like this, wanting to give himself wholly, surrender body and soul to a man whom--really--he hardly knew? If it were simply a matter of sex, the thing would be comparatively easy, and a woman could do the job just as well. He felt the ache of frustrated love spread through him.

"And now you know."

Andrew's kiss took him by surprise. The boy had propped himself up on one elbow, leaning down in the depths of the blackout. His lips were still dusty but his mouth tasted sweet.

" _Yes_ ," said Andrew urgently. "Now I know."


	2. You'd be so nice to come home to

Five days later the question of the spare room was settled when Alec was bombed out of his new digs within days of moving in. Though the hospital had been perfectly willing to put him up for the duration, Ralph had brooked no argument, and Alec had accepted with the air of a foregone conclusion.

After all those years of shipboard life, Ralph did not like to live alone. He had a strong feeling that he and Alec would be better flatmates than they had been lovers, and Alec carried the further strong recommendation of being a man who would not object to Ralph's taste in overnight guests.

It was just that the overnight guest in question was Andrew. 

"You'll have to ask him first," said Alec warily.

"He can't object to a few days."

"Oh, he can."

"He wouldn't, then. He's not the type."

Despite his confident stance, Ralph had a feeling of rolling the dice when he rang Andrew at home. The feeling only increased when the first two attempts of the operator to connect them resulted in nothing but dead air. By the time that Andrew picked up, Ralph's heart was in his throat.

"It took me three tries before I could get through," he said. "Is anything the matter?"

"Just the usual." One could hear air raid sirens wailing in the background. "And you?"

"As a matter of fact something's come up. My friend Alec wants a place to stay, a bomb fell on his block of flats. As I had the spare room I offered it him, at least temporarily." Ralph paused. "He won't make any trouble for us."

"He's your friend, of course he won't."

It seemed to Ralph to be rather begging the question but he didn't say that.

"I didn't like you to feel that I had done it without consulting you," he said, though of course he had. "It's your room, it always will be."

"Yes," said Andrew, the sort of faith that did not need to say I trust you. "Sorry, I must go now, Tom needs the line. I shall see you tomorrow."

"God bless," said Ralph and rung off.

***

Andrew stumbled a little as he came through the door, as if he'd got a stone in his shoe. Ralph felt immediately a fool for not having told Alec to clear out. What with one schedule and another, it was only half an hour of overlap, but Alec had chosen just the wrong time of day to establish himself in the sitting room with a gin and tonic.

To his credit Andrew recovered quickly, but Ralph found every detail of the room suddenly becoming clear to his own eyes: Alec's loosened tie, the way Alec was lounging in one of the room's two overstuffed arm chairs, the generous double in his own hand.

"The sun was over the yard arm," he said. "Sorry, I should have waited."

"You must be Ralph's friend," said Andrew. His clear voice betrayed only the slightest hint of over-strain. "How do you do. I'm Andrew Raynes."

"Alec Deacon," said Alec, using his professionally reassuring tone. He stood up. "Do sit down, I was just going anyway."

"Andrew, let me get you a drink," Ralph said, getting to his feet at the same time.

It was one of those awkward moments, three men standing in a room with only two decent chairs, no one knowing who would be first to accept the others' offered concession.

"I'll just put on some tea," said Andrew. "If you'll excuse me."

He disappeared quickly into the tiny kitchen.

Alec shrugged and sat down again. "Tea?" he said quizzically.

Ralph stayed by the drinks cabinet long enough to surreptitiously top off his own glass with gin. "I keep it for him. He likes it."

As he sat down again he could feel Alec's eyes on him. "Greater love hath no man..."

"It's just Typhoo," grumbled Ralph. "Come off it."

After a minute or two Andrew came through with cup of tea in hand. Before Ralph could get to his feet again, he had perched himself on the broad arm of the chair. He laid a hand simply on Ralph's shoulder and gave him a fond look.

Between them Ralph and Alec laid a covering fire of light conversation, shop talk about air raids and appendicitis. Alec had a great deal to say about his new position at Barts so for him it was no effort. Ralph felt the strain more. It took some minutes for him to notice that Andrew--that unpredictably shy, unclubbable boy--was making the running himself.

"She'd been hit by shrapnel," he was saying. "Tom said 'get in the back, Andrew, she's bleeding out.' I did what I could, though of course I'm no doctor. There was another raid and we had to go streets out of the way because a water main had gone on Bishopsgate. We got to Barts in the end. Our stretchers had gone so I had to carry her in."

"Yes," said Alec. "Yes, I remember that night. I have seen you at Barts, come to think of it."

"Who was this?" asked Ralph, feeling stupid and miles behind.

"Susan," said Andrew, as if he ought to have known. "She's a Friend, she works with me in the unit."

"She's making a fine recovery," Alec added.

Ralph downed the last of his drink. "Let me get you another, Alec."

"Not for me, thanks."

Ralph had just got to his feet again when there came a knock at the door. It was the landlady, something about the gas bill and the amount of time he'd spent on the telephone last week. She came up on the flimsiest of pretexts but Ralph thought it worth humouring her regardless. He pulled the door of the flat shut behind him and said, "I'll come down to the kitchen."

Five minutes stretched into fifteen and by the time he went upstairs again he was wondering what he would find when he stepped back into the sitting room.

"It seems to me that it's a simple matter of justice," Andrew was saying.

"Don't let him make you into a conchie, Alec, it wouldn't suit you."

"Oh, we weren't discussing pacifism."

"What then? I'll get you that drink now."

"The Labouchere Amendment," said Alec in a tone of light amusement.

Ralph found himself staring in amazement at Andrew, who looked back at him with an air of serene imperturbability.

"I was just saying to Alec how lucky you are to have him as a flatmate," Andrew explained, "since the law seems to make things so difficult."

"It always has," said Ralph.

"It should be discussed more," said Andrew. "One has a tendency not to consider these things until they affect one personally. But that's just the trouble."

Ralph went to pour Alec another double. His own glass was empty as well. He topped it off, took a long swallow, filled it again.

"It is." Alec got to his feet. "No, Ralph, didn't I tell you I didn't want another? I'm going now. It was lovely meeting you, Andrew. I hope I shall see a great deal more of you."

"I hope so too," said Andrew earnestly.

***

Alec didn't stay out as long as Ralph would have liked. A few hours later they could hear him blundering around out in the sitting room, the faint sound of the radio. It wouldn't have bothered him in the least except that they had reached a rather ticklish point in the proceedings, and Andrew suddenly froze.

"He'll overhear."

Ralph groaned inwardly. It had been a long wait to get to this point and he was, in all honesty, soddingly drunk. He hadn't the patience. He hadn't the wherewithal. And Andrew showed no sign of picking up where he had left off.

"You know," said Ralph, "he's overheard a bloody sight more than that in his time."

"Has he?"

"Now you're being difficult for the sake of it. Didn't I tell you we used to be lovers?"

"That doesn't matter. You aren't now."

"Don't let it put you off." He felt as though he were coaxing an awkward rating into staying at his station, though in this case it was as much for the rating's good as his own. "Go on." 

"I shouldn't enjoy it," said Andrew stubbornly.

Ralph sighed and turned on his side. He put his arms around Andrew but the boy's body was rigid with disapproval. No comfort could be had--or given--from such an embrace, to say nothing of release.

"Andrew," said Ralph again, consciously gentling his voice.

"I just don't--"

Ralph threw off the sheet and rolled quickly out of bed. His head reeled a little. He couldn't find his dressing gown in the dark but it hardly seemed to matter.

Alec looked up curiously from his medical text as Ralph came in. He was sitting by the gas fire with a cup of tea, and his eyes seemed very dark in the low light. He raised an eyebrow at Ralph's state of undress and mouthed a question that Ralph couldn't make out.

"Nightcap," said Ralph brusquely.

He went to get another drink.

***

When he woke in the morning he was lying on the settee. Someone had covered him with a throw. The blackout curtains were open and Alec had gone. The medical text lay open on the table: a passage on sequestrectomy was carefully underlined. Ralph slammed the book shut and winced.

He pulled himself together through force of will, washed and dressed and shaved and then forced down two aspirin with a glass of water. Though he wanted something stronger--and he was sure that Alec would have something stronger--he told himself that it would do no good. He was scrambling two precious eggs over the gas ring when Andrew came into the tiny kitchen.

"Your head must be awful," he said. Ralph could not tell whether to read censoriousness in that tone.

"I thought you might want eggs. There's no point in arguing when we have so little time together."

"I wasn't arguing," said Andrew, but now the hurt in his voice was clear. "You did have a lot to drink last night. I only wondered if you were feeling all right."

"If you call that a heavy night..." said Ralph dismissively.

"That's what worries me."

"Well don't let it. It doesn't me."

That was out of line and untrue besides. Frowning at the eggs, Ralph concentrated on mastering his temper. Finally he took a deep breath and turned to look at Andrew for the first time that morning. The boy's hair was appealingly tousled, falling down into one eye. He was wearing Ralph's dressing gown.

"Look, I..." Andrew began.

"I'm sorry," said Ralph at the same time.

If the apology had been to another it would have been ' _sorry, Spuddy_ ' or ' _sorry, Boo_ ,' gentled with the understanding tenderness of a pet name. But somehow he could not imagine Andrew as anything but Andrew, and as a result the two words alone sounded flat.

"Come here," said Ralph. "Let me apologise to you properly."

Andrew obeyed him, bare feet on the gritty lino floor. Ralph put his arms out and this time Andrew allowed himself to be held, a grudging surrender. Ralph ruffled his hair.

"I was unreasonable," said Andrew against Ralph's shoulder. "I let myself get rattled. It wasn't fair to you."

"I should have told him to clear out."

"He lives here. He has as much right to the sitting room as we do. You can't really…"

"I can. I will. That's a promise."

Ten minutes later the apology had been given, and accepted, in more concrete form.

"The eggs are burning," said Andrew sleepily, fastening the dressing gown closed once again.

***

Andrew told him, some days later, that there was to be a party to celebrate Susan's release from hospital. She had recovered remarkably quickly from her shrapnel wound, no doubt due to the excellent care at Barts, and was looking forward to returning to her duties with the ambulance unit as soon as she was able.

Ralph felt that he had shown a suitable degree of interest in the tale, which was pleasant and edifying enough as far as it went; he was wrong-footed entirely when Andrew followed it up by inviting him to come along.

"You won't want me at something like that," he said.

"Of course I would," said Andrew. "I've met Alec but you've hardly spoken to one of my friends yet. I don't count Tom."

"If you _do_ want me," Ralph amended, "that makes all the difference. I would never stay away."

So it was that he found himself walking up that East End street for the third time, carrying a gift bottle of gin under his arm. The door of the house was open and he could hear the voices and the laughter as soon as he stepped into the hall.

Though the back door was open, the kitchen was close with a fug of cigarette smoke and humid air. A kettle whistled on the hob and there were even a few empty beer bottles carefully arranged along the back window. The kitchen was full to bursting with gay young people, men and women both, none of them in uniform. A few of them looked up as he came in. Ralph felt immediately that he was probably the oldest in the room by several years. Thankfully there was no sign of Dave.

Andrew was sitting at the kitchen table, wedged between the sink and the wall. He had a bottle of beer in front of him and his face was flushed with contentment. When he saw Ralph, he smiled.

"Over here," he said. "It may not look like there's room but I've saved you a stool."

It was not an easy matter getting round. The table was very close to the wall, and the young woman sitting next to Andrew did not look the sort to take kindly to being circumnavigated in an overly familiar fashion. He managed it, just. With a few drinks in him it might have been a different story.

"Ralph, this is Susan Longley. Susan, this is my friend Ralph Lanyon."

"How do you do," said Ralph. "I gather you're the guest of honour?"

She laughed in a way that suggested she would rather not have been the center of attention. Her arm was still in a sling. "Yes, well, it really should be Andrew and Tom, they were the heroes of the story after all. But I am here, and as they say it does rather make one feel that one can look the East End in the face."

"I suppose it does."

He could feel her gaze wandering to his own gloved hand; he tucked it away under the table, brushing against Andrew's knee.

Andrew slid the half-empty bottle of beer over to him. "You have it. I thought I would try it, but I don't like it much."

Across the table there was a burst of laughter. Not quite raucous, for it was not that kind of party. Not his sort of party at all. With the aid of the half bottle of beer, Ralph set himself nonetheless to making himself agreeable, and almost succeeded. 

"Tell me about yourself, Susan."

"Oh, there's not so much to relate," she said. "Read Geography at Girton, spent a year teaching sixth form, then came here. It's a terrible thing to be rescued by the war, isn't it? And what about you?"

"Never ask a sailor to start telling yarns," he said, a tactic which tended to deflect most casual enquirers.

"But I'd love to hear. One studies all these places but never gets to visit any of them. Apart from Malaya, but I was born there so it hardly counts."

So they started with Singapore and went on to Ceylon, and Aden, and the Suez, and Gibraltar, making their way homewards. Ralph lost himself rather in the telling, as he always did, but through all of it he could feel Andrew's eyes on him and Susan's gaze just passing him by, lighting upon Andrew.

 _Well_ , he thought. _So that's how it is_.

"Tell me, Andrew," she said finally, "how do you know Ralph? Were you at school together?"

It was nothing more than a polite enquiry, meant to draw him into the conversation, but Andrew coloured with a devastating totality, drawing far more attention than the question would otherwise have deserved. 

"Oh," he said jerkily. "No. No, er, we--"

"We were both stationed in Bridstow last year," put in Ralph with practiced ease. "Friends in common, that's all."

Andrew looked apologetic at that. Ralph himself said a silent prayer to Laurie's shade at having passed over his memory so casually.

"Who's for a drink?" he said, forcing cheer. "I know there's a bottle going around somewhere."

He need not have bothered, because that was when the air raid sirens started. Most of the partygoers hardly noticed, inured to life in the East End, but some keen soul got up and began herding people out the back door and into the Anderson.

It said something about the nature of wartime that the party hardly seemed to miss a beat. Tea and beer and cigarettes all made the move as well, and laughter came close to drowning out the bombs as a dozen people did their best to fit themselves into a shelter designed for six.

Ralph sat in the dank gloom wondering whether the bottle of gin had been brought out too and, if not, whether it was worth making the dash back into the house. He was wedged in shoulder-to-shoulder: on the one side was Andrew, on the other there was a ginger-haired boy with a girl sitting in his lap. In the darkness he imagined that he could hear Andrew breathing.

His mind kept running back to Laurie, the sort of sudden, crashing grief that is all the worse for coming unexpectedly. He had heard the raid from the Station, thought nothing in particular of it. 'Bridstow's getting it tonight,' someone had said. It might even have been him. And Laurie had been in the middle of it, perhaps dead already, perhaps dying. Trapped under the rubble, mortally injured, trusting that Ralph would come quickly to his side... no. He mustn't let himself think like that. There was nothing in it.

Someone was saying his name. It was Andrew. "Ralph? Ralph? That's the All Clear."

"Right," he said. "Of course."

He stood up, brushed off his uniform, feeling all the while as if his actions were those of another person. Out in the garden there was the smell of smoke, drifting cordite from the nearest ack-ack battery. That brought back its own memories. 

_It was awkward taking the gun just then_ , he remembered telling Laurie, _my sub had got put out of action the trip before_.

Ralph took a deep breath. He forced himself to tuck the thoughts away somewhere, Laurie and his sublieutenant and all of the others sunk beneath the waves.

"If I didn't need a drink before," he observed, a distant commentator upon some other man's ruin, "I do now."

Searchlights were still trailing across the drifting clouds. Most of the others had made their way back into the house by then; Andrew had hung back and was standing at his side. His face was worried in the half light.

"Maybe you need to go home."

"No one else is going home," said Ralph.

Andrew made a move towards the house and then stepped back.

"You were thinking about Laurie," he said, not a question.

Ralph said nothing. He didn't trust himself. When had it become unthinkable to conduct a conversation like this while sober?

Andrew continued: "I didn't know what to tell Susan, back inside. If you hadn't spoken up I would have said nothing at all."

"I didn't say so much," said Ralph.

"One doesn't like to turn Laurie into an idol, but it did make me feel as if I were Judas denying Jesus. I don't like to lie."

After a long pause, Andrew went in. Ralph stood alone in the garden.


	3. Nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the cross

One thing stayed in Ralph's mind after that night: Andrew didn't like to lie. 

It was simple, definitive. It was reason enough to place him on the list of people who would have been better off without Ralph Ross Lanyon in their lives.

Anyone could see how the story was meant to unfold: Andrew and his Girtonian girl, a wartime marriage between two direct and earnest Quakers. They would understand one another. After the war there would be children. They would go to meetings, raise their family, campaign for justice. All the rest of it would hardly matter anymore. Andrew would forget the man whom he had loved while a nineteen-year-old orderly at an E. M. S. hospital.

Ralph, on the other hand, would never forget. Not any of them.

Both Alec and Andrew were on night shifts that week, so the flat was empty when he got home and still empty when he left again. Once he could have slept through anything; no longer. Every time the sirens went he woke in a cold sweat, thinking of Laurie. Or Andrew, or Alec, or his sub. 

When he did sleep he had nightmares where people died just beyond his reach. Once, even, it was Bunny. Floating at sea in the killing cold of the north Atlantic, covered in oil, his imploring cries growing weaker and weaker. In his dream Ralph had stood at the rail and ordered his ship to make full speed towards the receding convoy, feeling not a trace of guilt or hesitation until he woke and found his pillow wet with salt tears.

The obvious solution was to get blind drunk and stay that way. No danger of anyone calling him to the bridge. No danger of company. There was hardly a reason to refrain.

One morning when he was going down to the toilet, he missed a step in the dark. Luckily the rest of the house was still asleep and accustomed to hearing crashes in the small hours. It was Alec who, coming home very early, found him passed out on the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

Ralph came to in one of the sitting room chairs, having just been shaken lightly.

"Do you know who you are, what year it is, and what a bloody stupid fool you've been?" Alec did not wait for an answer. "Good. I would ask whether you had any pain but I don't imagine you can feel much of anything right now. You're going to have a hell of a black eye in a few hours, and I think you've sprained your ankle."

"I'm not Sandy," mumbled Ralph, feeling that this was a very important thing to say.

"No," Alec agreed. "You're even more of a fool, because, unlike him, you know better."

For a few minutes there was blessed silence while Alec was busying himself with taping Ralph's ankle.

"You can't go on like this," Alec said later. "You're damned lucky it wasn't worse. If you'd tried to break your fall with your left hand you could have shattered the lot."

"Not lucky at all," said Ralph. "What the hell am I going to tell him?" 

"Tell him you hit your head in a raid. God knows there are enough of those these days."

Alec had an efficient answer to any question. Maybe all of his patients asked him this sort of thing.

Then he added, "of course, the truth is always a novelty."

 _I don't like to lie_. The words echoed in Ralph's head. He closed his eyes again.

***

"You what?" said Andrew.

"I fell," Ralph repeated, standing with hands behind his back, feeling as though he'd been brought before a disciplinary board. "I was stinking drunk. No one's fault but my own."

Andrew's gaze was very direct, his eyes a steely grey. Ralph felt a sudden, schoolboy desire to take his six strokes and be done with it. He would much rather have gone before the Admiralty than before this rather terrifying young man.

"Alec helped to patch me up," Ralph added. "He found me."

"Of course he did," said Andrew slowly.

He was tempted to say _it's not what you think_ but he suspected it would not help. Ralph was dead sober now and everything scraped against his nerves, like his glove had once rubbed against the raw flesh of his healing hand. 

"Thank you for telling the truth," Andrew added. "It makes a difference to me."

Only then did Ralph realise that Andrew was at a loss. Having come thus far, having accepted Ralph's surrender, he did not know how to claim the victory. Andrew rubbed at his face with his hand, blinked, dropped his eyes. He looked very weary.

"Well, what's it to be?" said Ralph.

"I'm thinking, you know," came the sharp rebuke.

 _Ralph_ , another man had once said to him, _do you mind if I think a minute?_

No good could come of this sort of thinking. It was exactly the wrong way to go about things, exactly the wrong sign. Ralph could feel his doom descending upon him, but he bowed his head and waited for the sentence to be pronounced.

"I had best go up to Pardshaw after all," Andrew said at last. "Dave was right. I can't see anything clearly here."

***

Two days later Ralph followed Andrew up to the Lakes. The lapse of time was no mistaken generosity on his part, no desire to give Andrew the space to reflect. He left just as soon as he could get away.

That Friday night, after staying late at the Navy office, he went straight to Euston, carrying nothing more than what he wore. The train was not until after ten. He could easily have stopped for a drink _en route_ ; he did not. Instead he paced restlessly up and down the platform, his gloved hand clenching painfully in his pocket.

He slept restlessly in the blacked-out train as it rattled towards the North. There were long stretches of unearthly peace and then the crash of bombs began again as it passed through the Midlands. In the small hours of the morning, just as dawn began to touch the sky, they stopped in an unidentifiable station--Wigan? Preston?--where women handed cups of tea through the corridor windows.

"Forces only," was the watchword.

Ralph brought one cup back for the terrified looking air cadet who had said he was on his way to RAF Silloth. A second, balanced uneasily between his thumb and forefinger, he gave to the young mother who had fallen asleep drooped against her toddler son. A uniform and a desk job did nothing in Ralph's eyes to entitle him to special treatment, if indeed anything ever had.

At 7.52, bang on time, the train pulled into Cockermouth. It was a clear, quiet July morning and London seemed impossibly distant in that small country town. People gave Ralph odd looks as they passed. "Where's your ship?" asked one wag, washing windows.

Rather than wait for the bus he walked the four miles to Pardshaw. The narrow country lanes brought him finally to a low, whitewashed stable block by the side of the road. On a green door there was a small sign: "Friends' Meeting House." Ralph tested the latch; it was open. He let himself in.

Through a short passage and he found himself in a garden. No, a graveyard. Opposite him was an old, slate-roofed building, also whitewashed, which looked as though it had stood in that spot since the days when the Friends were still persecuted for their beliefs. At the bottom of the graveyard was a bench and a low stone wall. Andrew stood by the bench, looking out at the rolling hills beyond.

Andrew turned as Ralph approached. There was no surprise on his face, only resignation. He shook his head.

"I don't know what to say, Ralph. You shouldn't have come up here."

"I knew eventually you'd tell me it was wrong. I couldn't stand the waiting."

"What?" said Andrew, all ingenuous confusion. He seemed even younger than his years, standing there in the garden, sleep still in his eyes and his shirt half unbuttoned.

"You know."

"I don't--"

"You and I," said Ralph impatiently. "You think it's wrong."

Coming all this way just to be told what he knew already seemed abruptly a fool's errand. He could have stayed in London and spent the weekend in sodden oblivion.

"That's not it at all. I told you already. You don't listen."

Ralph took a deep breath. "Well, I'm listening now. What is it?"

Andrew shook his head helplessly.

There was always a moment, in love as in battle, when a man must know exactly how much he was willing to sacrifice. Ralph swallowed, nerving himself to make the diversionary attack. One casualty only; acceptable losses.

"I've told Alec to move out. I'll stop seeing him altogether if that's what it takes. Stop calling, stop writing. He'll wonder but--I would. If you asked."

"It has nothing to do with Alec."

Ralph almost believed him.

"What, then?"

"I don't know whether it makes a difference," Andrew said quietly, "but I can't stand by and watch you kill yourself by inches. Not any more than I could if you had a gun to your head. You can't go on drinking the way you do now. My nerves won't stand it, whether or not yours will."

Ralph attempted to force a smile. It was, he felt, more like the cynical grin of a corpse.

"I always did say the best system was sober all week, blind on..."

"No. You know what I mean. And I expect, if you asked him, that Alec would agree." Andrew looked suddenly, inexpressibly sad. "Maybe you ought. If you won't take it from me, that is. Perhaps you would feel he knew better."

That was what did it. The thought of Andrew's willingness to make that sacrifice began to work at him inwardly.

"He would look after you," continued Andrew. "You might think I don't notice things. I'm not--I'm not blind. I can see it. He found you, he was there, I wasn't. A person might say there was something to be concluded."

"I wouldn't take it from him."

Andrew looked at him. "Would you take it from me?" he said quietly. 

"I'd be a fool not to, wouldn't I? At least I gather that's the message."

Andrew looked at him with a sort of dumb, inchoate hope. For a long time it trembled on the edge of words. Then something failed in his eyes and he looked away.

"Well," said Ralph, and then, again: "Well. I'm not the sort to wait for another man to tell me my duty. But I suppose there's something in it."

He got up and took a long turn around the edge of the graveyard, looking back at Andrew, who stood by the bench like a sentinel. The long grass was still wet with dew, dragging at the wool of his trousers. It seemed a long, slow path back to Andrew's side, past the crumbling memorials to generations of his stubborn, righteous forebears.

 _For Andrew,_ he told himself. _It's not the boy's fault he sees it as he does. Anything less he wouldn't understand, he'd think I was doing it by halves. And maybe he'd be right._

By the time Ralph approached the bench once again, his decision seemed inevitable, as if he had known it for years and only waited for Andrew to crystallise the thing into consciousness.

"That's settled, then," he said. 

"Is it? Just like that?"

"I don't know how else one can do it. But you can take it that I've signed the pledge. For the duration, shall we say? Next you'll be telling me how I need to go to Meeting."

Andrew, with his turn for the literal, looked sincerely shocked. "I would never say that."

"Stranger things have happened," replied Ralph, softening his voice to let the boy know that the argument was over. "But maybe not just yet." 

"I didn't expect that," said Andrew. "I didn't think. I underestimated you. I'm sorry."

Together they embraced, with only the hills looking on, as devoid of judgment as the gravestones or the sky.

Finally Ralph held Andrew at arm's length, smiled at him fondly. There were many things that he wanted to say, many questions he wanted to ask. But the only one he felt able to put into words was the most severely practical:

"What were you planning to do today? More walking?"

Andrew blinked. "I climbed Haystacks yesterday; I'm still a bit footsore. But what about you? Have you really come all the way up here just to turn round and go back again?"

"I don't have to be back till Monday morning," said Ralph. "I thought we might as well do something with ourselves."

"Shall we go sailing? We could take the train to Windermere. I read _Swallows and Amazons_ when I was small, you see, and I never found anyone to take me out in a boat. I liked to think that my father would have, but--"

Andrew shrugged, embarrassed. Ralph could tell the role in which he was being cast but, his ego having suffered a hard knock in recent days, he found that he didn't mind at all. 

He himself had not encountered the Arthur Ransome novels until Alec brought him _We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea_ while he was still convalescing in hospital. Though he was not much of a reader, he'd got on with it much better than Kafka, lying in bed and losing himself in the tale of a very different Channel crossing. One with, unlike his, a happy ending.

"Sailing a dinghy," he said, smiling. "Just like old times. You can be my Sublieut--my First Mate, that is. And afterwards we'll have time to stop in the village for a quick…"

Andrew looked at Ralph with an expression that he recognised as the cousin to his own 'straight look.'

"…for a cup of tea," finished Ralph.

Andrew smiled.

"Good," he said. "Let's go."


	4. Messing about in boats

"Usually I ask the gentlemen if they've been out in a boat before," said the man at the pier, looking at Ralph in his uniform, "but I reckon you've been in bigger ones than this in your time."

"Not much bigger," said Ralph. "I was in trawlers."

The old man laughed. "Don't suppose you'll be wanting to bother with life preservers."

"On the contrary, I make a point of bothering."

Ralph reached out to take the rather risible cork ring that was handed him; he was able to pinpoint the exact moment when the man spotted his gloved hand. Casual bonhomie turned suddenly to quiet regard.

"No charge, sir."

Ralph fumbled in his pocket for coins. "That's ridiculous, I…"

"No charge," the man repeated. "Not for the likes of you."

He would have argued further but he felt certain that it would only involve more fuss and embarrassment on all sides.

"Well, then, you'll have to let me buy you a drink when we get back."

It was exactly the right thing to say. The man beamed and, after passing on a map of the lake along with a few pieces of advice, let them go without further enquiry.

"I wish I could stop thinking of myself at times like this," said Andrew confidingly as they walked down the dock together. "I hate that I still allow myself to feel inadequate. I know very well that no one will ever speak to me like that and I find it hard to take, somehow. You deserve every bit of it; I wish I could have the courage of my convictions as well."

Ralph had not been thinking of his convictions at all but he was not sure that he could explain that to Andrew. He made a quick decision to ignore the theory and stick to the practice.

"You've been doing a hell of a lot more than I have, these past few months. How many people have you pulled out of the rubble?"

"It's not the same thing," insisted Andrew. "He certainly wouldn't feel it to be."

"More fool he. It's not so different."

Andrew stopped dead just short of the boat. "Ralph, you mustn't shelter me from what you really think about it all. About my being a--"

"Not while we're sailing," said Ralph, not unkindly, and jumped into the boat.

After that he busied himself with checking the rigging and readying the sail. He was dimly aware of Andrew cautiously climbing on board but the difficulties of handling lines with his bad hand took most of his attention. In the past year he'd learned to do the simpler things--eating, driving, even typing when the need arose--without much of a second thought, but this new task made him feel as clumsy as a new rating. He'd slipped off his glove first thing, but it was still damnably awkward.

"Andrew, could you just haul on that line there?"

A silence. Ralph looked up. Andrew was watching him with mixed admiration and uncertainty. He had positioned himself right at the centre of the thwart and was holding on to both gunwales as the boat gently rocked from side to side. One could see the white in his knuckles.

"What?" he said finally. "Which line?"

"Never mind. Can't you swim? Better tell me now if you can't."

Half his sailors hadn't known how, most of the city boys and even a few of the fishermen. Hostilities Only ratings. Ralph had tried to avoid thinking about the fact until, suddenly, it became terribly relevant. There was a moral in that.

"Of course I can swim. But is it meant to move like this?"

Ralph smiled despite himself. "It's not moving, my dear, it's calmer than your bath. Safer than houses."

(Not, he reflected, that houses were all that safe nowadays.)

"Just tell me what I'm meant to do," said Andrew doggedly, ignoring the rebuff. "If you assume I'm utterly ignorant you won't be far wrong. But I can certainly haul on a rope if you point it out to me beforehand."

Even with Ralph's clumsiness it was not long until they cast off and headed out into the bay. It was a perfect day for sailing: the wind had freshened, coming out of the north-north-west, and there were only a few cumulus clouds in the dark blue sky. Once they got out of the bay the boat heeled over, running with the wind on her quarter. Andrew looked at Ralph with new alarm until he was firmly reassured and settled in his place as counterweight.

Ralph felt as if he could breathe freely for the first time in a year. It was hardly speed as speed was reckoned, but the little boat was creaming through the water, sail bellying out, wake bubbling white in the deep water. 

He'd been too young by far for the Golden Age of Sail, having come up on coal and diesel, and he knew perfectly well that he would have been lost on one of the great old ships. But he'd been in time to see the windjammers coming into Falmouth on the grain race from Australia, or rounding Cape Horn with their cargoes of nitrates from Iquique, and he could not be unconscious of the romance of it all.

"Shall I call you 'Captain'?" asked Andrew suddenly. He smiled as though it were a rather daring flight of fancy.

"Don't," said Ralph sharply.

Abruptly it seemed a nonsense and a mockery to him. This was not his ship, and this placid, smiling lake with its holiday-makers was not the sea. There was no point in playacting, either for Andrew's amusement or for his own comfort. No matter what he did in his life, however important, however valuable, no one would ever call him Captain again.

On Andrew's face hurt and embarrassment were struggling for the upper hand. "I shouldn't have--I'm sorry. Of course not."

Though Ralph didn't really need to jibe just then, it seemed suddenly the best thing to do.

"Prepare to jibe," he said. And then, louder: "Andrew! Get your bloody head down!"

Andrew startled and then ducked. Ralph pulled in the mainsheet as hard as he could with his bad left hand. The boom slammed across.

After a few moments Andrew climbed out of his crouch in the bilge. "You startled me," he said shakily.

"Good. I meant to. You should have been paying attention."

A minute or two later he reflected that this was no training cruise, and his sole passenger no conscript; indeed, Andrew had gone to some pains to put on record his opposition to conscription. Ralph's next thought was that his irritability might have less to do with Andrew and more to do with the fact that he had not had a drink in over twenty-four hours. Perhaps it was starting to tell.

"That was uncalled for," he said finally.

"If you'd only told me what it meant," Andrew objected. "Next time I'll know!"

"No." A waggle in the wake. His bad hand, now gripping the tiller, was starting to cramp. "I meant myself. Sorry."

"Oh. That's all right."

They sailed in silence down the lake. Ralph kept one eye for the sail and one for Andrew, which might not have been approved nautical procedure, but he could feel the tightness around his own heart easing when the boy's face finally relaxed from its wary watchfulness into a half smile. Somehow, inexplicably, it mattered to him, though it would have been difficult for anyone to remain angry on such a glorious day.

That last smile seemed to be directed at him particularly. Andrew was looking back fondly, his hair ruffled by the wind.

"Shall we anchor somewhere?" asked Ralph. "Or shall I bring her into one of these little bays? We'll be wanting lunch before too long."

In the end Ralph found a perfect little bay on the windward shore, surrounded by trees and with a beautiful shelving bottom. He and Andrew pulled the boat up onto the sand and splashed ashore, trousers rolled up around their knees. Ralph unfurled the picnic rug and made it fast with a stone at each corner. Andrew brought out their lunch, sandwiches and ginger beer that he'd bought in town.

"Ginger beer," said Ralph flatly, before he could stop himself.

Andrew ignored it, gave him a hopeful look. "We could go swimming first. There's no one around for miles."

Without waiting for an answer he pulled his shirt off over his head.

 _Well,_ thought Ralph, _that's improved the day tremendously._ And then, more cynically: _If Alec were here he wouldn't have to ask me what the point of it all was._ And finally, worst and most disloyal of all: _Laurie did have good taste._

But it was true. There was no denying that Andrew was a handsome boy, blond and burnished by the sun. He had the figure of someone still growing into his full strength but one could tell that it would be considerable when it arrived. The past few months of heavy labour had filled out the muscles of his shoulders and back, and with his strikingly pale skin (he had, of course, been working night shifts) he could have made a passable Greek statue.

The mood was broken when Andrew stumbled while pulling off his second sock. There came the faint sound of what passed for cursing in the Society of Friends. Ralph chuckled to himself and began taking off his uniform, folding it nearly on a corner of the rug.

By the time that Ralph dove into the lake, Andrew was already swimming. Ralph was glad of that, for when the cool water closed over his head he was gripped by a sudden constriction in his chest. He surfaced again, kicking hard, his hand throbbing as if the wound were still fresh. Unlike Laurie he had never been an exceptionally strong swimmer, but neither had he ever been afraid of the water. It was that involuntary dousing in the Channel which had done for him.

"Isn't this lovely?" said Andrew, floating easily on his back.

"Lovely," echoed Ralph. He turned for shore.

Even after lunch the thought of it still lingered. He sat leaning against a tree, slowly eating a rather small square of chocolate, and found that he could not quite shake the memories. Andrew let him alone with it; that was one of the things that he liked about the boy. Then, when he slowly began to talk, Andrew accepted the subject without comment, as if it had been tacitly understood that it needed discussion. Ralph had talked little to him about Dunkirk before that. He found that he had a great deal to say.

"...Obviously I had other things to worry about, giving the order to abandon ship. But once it became clear that she was going down, I found myself thinking: _Thank God we're not on the return trip. Thank God we're not by the mole, bitching it up for the others. Thank God it's nearly summer and we're in the Channel. Thank God there are ships nearby._ I thought, you see, that we'd simply get picked up and be on our way with thanks. Then I went into the water and things seemed very different."

"Oh?" said Andrew, listening with the sort of interest that is conscious of its own ignorance and does not presume to prompt with questions.

"Well, it _is_ cold, however much colder it might be on the Arctic Circle, and there was all the fuel oil floating about. Men were calling out for help and I began to think that I'd best stir myself to do something other than tread water when I suddenly came over all light headed. That was when I realised I was wounded, you see. It hadn't struck me while we were abandoning ship. I must have been bleeding pretty hard by then. That's when I started kicking like hell."

"What happened next?"

"By the time they hauled me over the side of the cockle boat I was pretty well gone. I remember trying to count the survivors and the numbers never adding up. Probably I couldn't have counted the fingers on my own hand. In hindsight, of course, you might say that was a good thing."

Andrew reached out to touch his bare hand, massaging the palm between thumb and forefinger. There was no pity in that touch, only a hesitant concern. Ralph's palm was now crossed with welts where the pull of the mainsheet had bitten into still-tender flesh. Andrew's thumb found them unerringly.

"It was difficult getting a grip on the line," Ralph admitted. "Another half a finger wouldn't have hurt. But I've said that before."

"May I kiss it?" asked Andrew tentatively.

Laurie, he reminded himself, would have understood. Andrew did not, but it was not his fault. Ralph hoped, for his sake, that he never would.

"Yes," said Ralph, steeling himself to take it for Andrew's sake.

His hand was shaking, slightly. Andrew steadied it in his own, leaned down, but his breath only brushed against Ralph's skin.

When Andrew raised his eyes to Ralph's face again, they were burning with an unhidden admiration. He had the inexhaustible capacity for love that a young man possesses when he has spent years starved of reciprocated affection.

"Here," said Ralph gently. "Why don't you lie down for a bit? We don't have to get back for ages yet."

Andrew let himself be guided down to lay his head in Ralph's lap. Ralph began to stroke his damp hair.

"Do you think about Laurie?" asked Andrew some time later.

"All the time."

"So do I. The odd thing is that I don't feel guilty about it, either way I mean. In fact it's quite the opposite." He paused and then said sleepily: "I seem to feel that way about a lot of things, these days."

"What I don't understand is how you square it with that religion of yours."

"Laurie?" said Andrew, blinking upwards into the sun. He shaded his eyes with one hand. 

Ralph could very easily imagine him saying that same name while lying in another man's lap, years ago now. It could have been an age. 

"No, the other."

Andrew lay silent a long time, his eyes half closed. Ralph thought he was falling asleep.

"Well," Andrew said finally, "how do you square it with yours?"

"I don't have a religion. Apart from the Articles of War, of course." He quoted with some masochistic relish the words that he had been required to read aloud at his ship's commissioning: " _'If he shall be guilty of Sodomy with Man or Beast he shall suffer Penal Servitude.'_ And I never did get up to any of that sort of thing on my ship. It wouldn't have done."

Another long silence. Ralph ran his hand through Andrew's wavy hair, which was drying quickly in the sun. Andrew's bare skin was just beginning to go pink with it. 

"But you never did tell me about your lot," said Ralph. "I can't wrap my head around it. You do read the Bible, don't you?"

"Of course. But that doesn't stop us thinking about it as well."

Ralph blinked. "Steady on."

"That came out all wrong," said Andrew contritely. He rolled off Ralph's lap, propped himself up on one elbow so that he could better look at Ralph. "It's simply this. One values the Bible because one believes it's inspired, isn't that so? I mean, that it's meant to be inspired by God."

"Right," said Ralph doubtfully.

"But inspiration doesn't only come from without. We in the Society of Friends, believe in the inner light, which is the voice of God that speaks within each of us. The Holy Spirit, if you will."

Andrew's explanation was fluent, as if he had been called upon to give it many times before. Ralph could not muster that kind of certainty in the face of Andrew's calm assurance.

"So what it boils down to is, the whole world can be against you, but if you know you're right, you can cheerfully give them all two fingers. It sounds your sort of religion."

"It _is_ my religion." 

"Of course."

"But you were asking me about something in particular," continued Andrew, in that distant, thoughtful tone that he had, as if men were not being sent to prison over this question of theology. "You could ask Dave--I suppose in a manner of speaking you have already--and he would tell you that naturally we think it a sin. The act, I mean, the other is just temptation."

"Well, yes," said Ralph impatiently, "but that's no different than the rest of Christianity, is it?"

Andrew looked even more thoughtful. "I think it is. Or it is for me, at any rate. Perhaps it _would_ be a sin for Dave; it would make him feel as though he had separated himself from God. But I haven't found anything in it but joy."

"If that's what you think--"

"I know what you're going to say. I don't mean in the eyes of the world; how could I speak for the world? I mean you and I. All the love that you've shown me. The change--I don't mean to sound conceited, but the change it's made in your own life. The fact that we're here together this afternoon. That _is_ salvation. None of that could grow out of a sin."

"I believe you. Of course I do." 

He didn't, not really, not in his heart of hearts. But how could he admit it to the boy? 

Andrew laid himself down on his side, smiling to himself. He rested his hand on Ralph's thigh.

"So far as it goes," Ralph added, measuring his tone as best he could. "But thousands wouldn't. You can't just go saying, excuse my bluntness, _my boy friend and I quite enjoy buggery therefore there isn't anything wrong with it_. Still less, _God spoke to me and said it wasn't a sin any more_. People would lock you away."

"I don't mean shouting it from the rooftops," said Andrew sleepily, after a long pause, "and I certainly wouldn't use that language. But you told me once not to go expecting persecution and I think you were right. One only locks oneself away from the world before one has ever tried living in it."

"Ordinarily I would agree with you," said Ralph. "Not when it comes to this, though. It isn't paranoia talking. It's experience."

Andrew sighed. There was nothing in it of impatience, still less of anger; rather it was the contented sigh of a young man who is lying next to his lover in the sun on a beautiful day.

"Well," he said, "I'm not alarmed on that account. I think you're worth any amount of persecution."

But before Ralph could craft any worthy reply to that confidence, Andrew had fallen asleep. Above them the sun made its slow way across the sky.


End file.
